Updated April 11, 2023
Introduction to Laravel updateorcreate
Laravel updateorcreate is defined as an eloquent method that, in the context of object-oriented programming, is defined as a function or a procedure that is defined as an association with a class to define a particular behavior of the instance of the class in the free and open-source PHP based web framework that enables the development of web applications in the architectural pattern of model-view-controller. Laravel is based on the concept of Symfony, which is a set of reusable components of PHP framework through which one can build web applications, APIs, and other microservices. Through matching the constraints as the first parameter, Updateorcreate attempts to find a model that matches the use case. In this article, we will go through this method in detail.
Create Record User Database Table
To create a table in Laravel, we would need to use the method named create, which is present in the class schema. This class enables providing access to an object, and the access is enabled from the container. This method takes in 2 arguments to execute the command, where the first one signifies the name of the table, and the other is an anonymous function known as closure, often used for callback methods, to be used as a parameter in a function that internally takes in Blueprint as an object. The respective code to create a table in Laravel is:
Schema::create(' < name of the table > ', function (Blueprint < variable name >) {
< variable name >->id();
});Now that the table is created, some of the sub-functions are equally critical for the proper working of the Database table. We will discuss those in this section:
Check if a column name or the whole table name exists or not: To perform this, we use the method of hashtable and hasColumn to check if the table exists or whether the column exists through the respective methods. The command for the same are:
- if (Schema::hasTable(‘ < name of the table > ‘)) {
// Set of commands to be performed
}- if (Schema::hasColumn(‘ < name of the table > ‘, ‘ < name of the column > ‘)) {
// Set of commands to be performed
}Connection to the database: Before even the creation of a database, it is important to first have the connection built first. For the same we use the connection The command is:
- Schema::connection(< name of the connection >)->create(‘ <name of the table> ‘, function (Blueprint < variable name >) {
$table->id();
});Using update or create Method
The updateorcreate method is from the genre of inserting and updating a model and falls under the category of upserts. The different methods available in inserting and updating a model are:
- Inserts
- Updates
- Upserts
- Mass Assignment
Upserting in databases and computing refers to modifying a database table to enable the insertion of rows in case the rows don’t exist, and even if they do, it will update the same. One can think about upsert as an amalgamation of update and insert. One would now think that if inserts and updates are already present, why would one need upsert as another method. On some occasions, the user would need to update a model that already exists, and in case the model match is not present, the creation of a new model needs to be done. Now to use 2 different methods to perform the activity might be error-prone. When this method is called, it is made sure that the operation is free from any error. To use the method, we would first need to get the data that needs to be updated or inserted and the corresponding columns that need to be matched. For example, let us make a case to update the columns “City of residence” and “Pin code” for a person whose “Employee_ID” is Lorem. The code that needs to be executed is:
$employee= Employee::updateOrCreate(
[' Employee_ID ' => 'Lorem'],
['City_Of_Residence' => 'Bangalore', 'PIN' => 270991]
);Here the code will search for records where “Employee_ID” is Lorem, and following the condition on whether that record exists or not, the other corresponding columns get either updated (if already exists) or a new row is inserted (if the match doesn’t happen). We also need to understand that updateorcreate is only applicable when one row needs to be updated or inserted in the method.
User Database Table
After the table is updated or created with the new database, we can now check if the entry that we have made has actually gone into the DB or not. We can do this by retrieving aggregates. For example, we would execute the following command and see if we recover a result equal to one or not.
$count = Employee::where(' Employee_ID ', 'Lorem')->count();This command will return $count value as equal to 1, which means that the record has been updated or created with the latest modifications, and the corresponding ‘updated_at’ and ‘created_at’ are also updated.
Benefit Laravel updateorcreate
We would now like to understand the advantages Laravel updateorcreate provides using the methodologies discussed above. We are listing them down for everyone’s easy reference.
- updateorcreate is an eloquent method which means that some columns viz. ‘updated_at’ and ‘created_at’ in the table are automatically updated when this method is used.
- With Laravel updateorcreate, the need for repetitive SQL code is removed from the scope.
- This method allows code readability by cleaning up the PHP code that may be written more extensively.
- With the combination of 2 operations into one method, this method enhances the development speed of the application.
Conclusion – Laravel updateorcreate
With this, we came to an interesting topic where we discussed the Laravel updateorcreate in-depth and understood its working. We can’t stop praising the advantages it brings by cleaning up the code in certain circumstances and allowing some eloquent properties to be extended while it is being used.
Recommended Articles
We hope that this EDUCBA information on “Laravel updateorcreate” was beneficial to you. You can view EDUCBA’s recommended articles for more information.
